Where Our Hearts Are
by RoseblossomWarrior
Summary: Oneshot for 3 Oct. 11. They had burned it so that they could never go back to it. They thought there was nothing left for them. But there was always something left for them: Home. Elric family-centric.


Disclaimer: I don't own FMA, I only wrote this fic.

Notes: This is partially dedicated to my tumblr friend Amy; I was supposed to write something happy about Hoho and Trisha for her, but it ended up becoming this. Whoops. And thanks to my other friend, Lett, for looking this over and giving her opinion. This is my first 3 Oct 11, and I want everything to be perfect so I can sob in peace (pieces).

This fic's POV shifts were done for the reason to trying to make it seem like a big family hug. So, yeah. I hope you cry rivers like I did while writing this.

* * *

Where Our Hearts Are

(For 3 Oct 11)

_She was a smile in the mind's eye. She was the light in the heart. She was home; she was worth everything to return to, to embrace. _

()()()()()

_Now_

Hohenheim's steps had never been so slow. Part of him was afraid of what this meant, but of course, he had been aiming for this all along. And never, ever would he consider turning around, even if that was an option—even if he was afraid. He was going home, and he wasn't going to stop in his journey.

He had never really known what it felt like to be old. Mentally and spiritually old, yes, as it had been roughly four and a half centuries since he had been born, but never had he felt such tiredness in his muscles, such tiredness in his whole body. He was sure that he had survived the days-long train ride by sheer will alone, and the same thing had been what had lifted his stiff body off of the train seat and set him moving.

It was the middle of the night when he arrived in Resembool. He limped out of the train station, letting out tired sounds as he advanced. He didn't stop to rest or to enjoy the scenery, even though he knew that this would be the last time he would lay eyes on the tiny town. He was running out of time.

"I wonder how Pinako is doing," he murmured, ascending the hill out of the main part of town. Once, the path had led to his house, but now it only led to the Rockbell residence and the cemetery.

"I would have liked to have seen her one last time," he continued, speaking to no one but himself. He hadn't done such a thing for roughly four centuries, and though he found himself missing those who had now gone, he was ecstatic that he was _by himself_. "I would stop in and see her, but I'm afraid if I stop moving I won't be able to start up again."

He found himself smiling. "Oh, well. She'll have company again when the boys come home. I wonder how long it's been since those two were home together."

()()()()()

_Then_

Two words. Ten letters. Then, a date.

_Don't forget_

_3 Oct 11_

A simple message. Put in a place easy to reach but not so easy to open. A note that hadn't needed to be written, but a meaning that _had _to be recorded in a physical place.

That date, that message, that meaning, was seared into Edward's skull with the memory of fire scratching at the sky as it consumed everything except for the time the boys had spent in that house, in that safe place where nothing seemed dangerous. But his father had left that house. His mother had died in it. He and Alphonse had performed human transmutation in it.

It had been a stained house, in the end.

Honestly, Edward had had the urge to mistrust it. But he and Alphonse had made their decision to go after their bodies, and Edward had become a dog of the military to do so. And they wouldn't, _couldn't_, go back to it.

There were some things that had made it out of the house before they torched it. Before she had died, Trisha had entrusted certain items and pictures to Pinako to look after. But anything else, other than things that could be of use to them (not that there was much), was incinerated.

Edward and Alphonse were going to see their mission through to the end, and they couldn't have the luxury—didn't _deserve_ the luxury—of having a house to return to.

But, in a sense, they still did have someplace to go. The Rockbell house. Though Edward would never admit it, he considered the Rockbell house an extension of the home he shared with Alphonse; that is, his heart resided with those people as well. Pinako and Winry and Den were family.

()()()()()

_Then_

Alphonse didn't regret agreeing to the decision of burning down their house. There wasn't anything left inside it for him or his brother anymore. It was just an empty house, not a home.

Alphonse hadn't been in his first home in years. Not since his mother's arms had turned from warm and welcoming to cold and uninviting. Not since the physical embodiment of love and care had shed her earthly form and had transcended back to whence she had come from.

As alchemists, neither Alphonse nor Edward believed in any sort of god. But ever since Alphonse was a child—hell, he was _still_ a child—he had believed that his mother was a gorgeous angel. An entity so pure that certainly no one deserved her presence. Least of all sinners.

Even still, he visited Trisha's grave at every opportunity.

On this night, he left the Rockbell house and walked along the familiar path that led up and down the expansive hills of the Resembool plains. He would have enjoyed the stroll if he had been able to feel the still air of the warm night (was it even warm that night?), but he had the faith that one day he would make this journey on two strong, flesh legs that would carry him only as far as they could without hurting.

Sometimes he forgot just how far he and Edward had had to run as kids just to get to Winry's house. But he didn't mind; it wasn't as if he felt (physically) tired, after all. But when he climbed the last hill, coming into view of a lifeless expanse of dust, he could almost imagine that it was daylight, that Edward was beside him, and that their mother was putting the laundry out to dry, having already put dinner on the table for all of them.

For a moment, he thought he could smell the food, smell the house, smell home, but of course he couldn't. That was all burnt; that was all now the crumbled ashes of memory, pushed away to remain only in his thoughts and replaced with a physical body of steel that couldn't smell a thing, couldn't feel a thing, couldn't even dream of simpler times.

The simpler times, he mused as he turned away from the crumbled remains of his past, were something that he would always want to return to. There was no denying that fact. It was why he and his brother had sinned in the first place. It was one of the reasons why he kept ghosting the area of his old home, why he kept visiting his mother whenever possible.

In those days, he had a secret: he imagined the house was the embodiment of his father; the walls and roof had served as limbs and torso to protect, and the windows served to show the emotions of the man who was not there to reveal them. Sunny weather had been a smile. Rain had been sadness. Thunderstorms had been irritation and anger (Alphonse had been scared of thunder for a long time).

But he hadn't considered the house his home.

He entered the graveyard and was quickly able to find Trisha Elric's grave; he knew exactly where it was, and it wasn't as if it were at the far end of the area. He knelt in the grass beside the engraved stone and ran his hand along its surface, though it wasn't like he could feel it. Not physically, anyway.

Sometimes it felt as if warmth was something that was merely a dream. He could remember feeling it, but feeling...was a foreign thing for him. Like a word in another language. He could memorize its definition, but only fluent speakers could use it in a sentence.

"Hey, Mom," he said. "It's been a while, huh? I know Brother already came to see you, and I'm sorry I couldn't come. I was a bit, uh, broken. But Brother fixed me right up when he got his arm back. Did he tell you what we've been up to? Well..."

And he spoke for a long, long time. After all, he couldn't physically tire of speaking. All the while, he thought of the woman beneath the earth, of how she would smile, of how she would stare longingly out the window, of how she was the kindest entity he had ever known. And her warm arms, enveloping him, had been where his heart lay.

She had been his home.

Alphonse would have cried if he could. All the same, his voice was shaky as he bid his mother goodbye and left the graveyard, following the predawn light back toward the Rockbell house. Edward wanted to catch the first train out of Resembool, and Alphonse agreed that it was their best option to head to Central as soon as possible.

He and his brother had their bodies to regain. And their mistake, their sin, was what drove Alphonse. He had to rectify what had been done. Because Edward wanted his limbs back, and Alphonse had inadvertently taken his arm. If Edward was fully-limbed and happy, then Alphonse was happy, no matter what his own body was. Alphonse's heart and home lay with his brother now.

It had for years.

()()()()()

_Then_

Edward felt something shake his flesh arm, and he blearily opened his eyes to see Pinako standing beside him.

"Come on, get up," she said sternly, but not unkindly. "You should eat some breakfast before you head out to Central. The Major is already up and outside. I'm not quite sure where Alphonse is."

Ed grumbled sleepily and sat up, but Pinako was already walking out of the living room and down the hall to her workroom. He stared blearily after her for a moment before nearly falling off the couch in an effort to find his suitcase. He changed into his traveling clothes and shuffled into the kitchen, finding that Pinako had prepared scrambled eggs and toast for him. He sat down and pretty much shoved the food into his mouth all at once. When he was done, he put his plate and fork on the counter beside the sink and made to head back into the living room to grab his suitcase.

But he stopped.

Pinako was known for having a bit of a nostalgic side. She had entire photo albums dedicated to the Rockbell family; a few of the old archives depicted her as a much younger, much taller woman whom Edward thought was a total fake (how a person so tall could become so short was a mystery). But Pinako was mostly proud of the collection she kept on the corkboard and desk in the kitchen. The snapshots caught the smiles of the late Rockbell doctors; their daughter; Pinako; Den; and sprinkled here and there were the faces of Ed, Al, and their mother.

But there would always be one photo in particular that would catch his eye.

_"I know you don't understand, sweetie," _Trisha had told him when he had brought the photo to her attention. _"But your father was just really happy that day. Sometimes when you're really happy, you cry. Crying is the sign of a strong person, Ed, remember that."_

It was the only Elric family picture. The only one with all four of them together. ...Well, three Elrics and one deadbeat father, as Ed would put it. Ed couldn't remember it being taken; he was just managing to walk at the time, and Al was crawling and drooling all over the place, so he wouldn't remember, either. But despite the fact that they couldn't remember it happening, the proof was there on the corkboard:

_A young, smiling mother holding a blonde baby, whose grinning brother was held by a broad-shouldered man—_a man whose head was obscured by the corner of a snapshot of Den.

And Edward felt grateful that he didn't have to look at the bastard's face.

He couldn't stand the mere thought of his father. Hohenheim had left them. Edward could remember the look on the his face as he left in the middle of the night, abandoning them to fend for themselves. Abandoning them, like a coward and not like a man. A man would have stayed and a man would have cared.

A man would not have made his lover's face sink whenever she thought her children weren't looking.

For some reason, Edward couldn't help himself; he inched toward the corkboard, peering at the picture and wondering how the man could have left such a home. To Edward (and he knew Alphonse felt the same way), Trisha had been their home, had been all they needed. Edward couldn't understand how anyone close enough to her to have children with her would not feel the same way, unless Hohenheim had simply been a heartless bastard in the first place (and Edward definitely leaned toward that thought).

Edward had actually looked at the picture often, but when he lifted the corner of the other picture to see his father's wet, unsmiling face, he remembered not having ever been able to make sense of it. Everyone else in the picture was smiling (or, in Al's case, sucking on his pacifier), but it was easy to see Hohenheim's frown, his tears.

And Edward just could not understand why. He had never been able to understand. In his childhood, Edward had pored over the photo sometimes, lying in his bed and holding it above his head, and he had not understood it; he had rolled around, hanging his head back over the edge of the bed so that he was upside-down while looking at the picture, and even the blood rush hadn't helped (not that it really would). He hadn't done it very often, but when he did he would always wait for Alphonse to fall asleep after their mother tucked them in for the night, or he would sneak a peek if he ever found himself alone for a little while.

He never told Alphonse or his mother about how often he looked at the picture. Because how could he admit to the fact that his father's disappearance bothered him? Not that it wasn't obvious how much he disliked the man.

But why...was Hohenheim crying?

Perhaps he would never know.

And why did he even care?

Hohenheim didn't deserve the title of "father." He hadn't been there for them. He hadn't been Ed's definition of a father and he certainly hadn't fit his definition of a home, which had been solely reserved for Trisha until it was apparent that she was never coming back.

Ed finally turned away from the picture and went to collect his things. No matter how hard the past tugged at him, he had to keep moving forward. But he would never, ever forget: not his parents, not the Rockbells, not his town, not his house, and not his home.

Because Alphonse was his home, and he had broken him, stripped him of his body and stuffed him into a mockery of the human form, caused him to stay forever awake and forever unable to feel.

And Edward was never going to feel right with himself again until he fixed his mistakes, fixed his brother, tended to his home.

()()()()()

_Now_

Thoughts of his sons were enough to give strength to Hohenheim's worn muscles. He tried to enjoy the night air around him and the bright stars above him, but time seemed to acknowledge his inevitable passing and sped faster, chasing away the pinpricks of light and heralding the grey dawn. Hohenheim's last dawn.

"This one isn't nearly as pretty as some of the others I've seen," he murmured, breathing in the morning mist. "Just another average day. And I won't see sunset." He let out a small sound resembling a chuckle.

He almost felt nervous to see Trisha. He nearly felt like he had when he had first recognized his feelings for her (a time when stumbling over himself because he was so flustered with her), and he was trying to think of what to tell her. Of course, he had to speak about Edward and Alphonse, and he had to tell her how much he loved her, how much she meant to him, how much his family had nurtured his soul. She had made him feel like a man, and not like a monster. She had made him feel human, and he had become human, become mortal, because of her.

He had to thank her, even if he was just a helpless, insignificant human that still didn't want to die.

He entered the cemetery, limping in front of his lover's headstone. He stood there for a moment, staring at her name and feeling anguish that he had to read that name. And then he knelt down, sitting on his knees.

Her body lay below him. And that simple fact reminded him of the countless times he had admired the warmth of her character; the warmth of her body as she touched him and he touched her; the warmth of her soul. He had thought of her every day he had been away from her. She and the boys had been what he saw behind his eyelids before he would succumb to sleep, and she had been his drive and his goal. And now, he could finally say what he was dying to say.

"Hello, Trisha. I'm home."

()()()()()

_Home wasn't the house. The house was where home had resided, at one point in time. The house was what was burned; home was too strong to be simply turned to ash._


End file.
